All collectively now:
Winnie-the-Pooh,
In some way you simply knew,
A scary film model was the mistaken method, and
Winnie-the-Pooh,
The concept’s no less than new,
Willy, nilly, nonetheless he’s now a misogynist killer.
On the coolness stroke of midnight, 31 December 2021, AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh went out of copyright and, like a demon from an open grave, a worryingly dangerous thought flew out into the world: a horror model of AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Properly, right here it’s, promising to do for Brit horror what Intercourse Lives of the Potato Males did for Brit comedy, with a terrifying mixture of not-scary and not-funny, and a solid of Love Island sorts on Xanax apparently studying the dialogue off an optician’s chart held up behind the digital camera.
What we actually have to see will not be the movie, however the pitch assembly – or in actual fact the assembly earlier than the assembly. Hidden cameras ought to have been arrange at a central London members’ membership the place nobody is fussed about folks going into the bogs two at a time. A lightbulb goes on over somebody’s gurning face they usually gibberingly announce the thought for an irresistible topic/remedy disconnect: Winnie the Pooh (cutesy youngsters’ leisure) plus horror (supercool violent and hilarious). However the OMFG issue is sky excessive for the mistaken causes.
Because it occurs, the ensuing movie doesn’t present the smallest observant curiosity within the precise Winnie-the-Pooh materials. There’s nothing right here to point out that, like many youngsters’s tales, they’ve one thing doubtlessly disturbing about them. Or that perhaps AA Milne’s PTSD after the primary world battle – a sophisticated determinant consider his well-known creation – does certainly converse to the horror expertise. However look, if the folks concerned on this movie aren’t that fascinated with Winnie-the-Pooh, I don’t blame them. I’ve at all times discovered the allegedly lovable bear extremely silly and boring. However why do it?
An elaborate backstory claims that the creatures of Hundred Acre Wooden got here to depend upon little Christopher Robin’s visits, each for the meals and the love he introduced them. However then he grew up and went away, and this betrayal turned all of them into embittered, feral and cannibalistic monsters, who really ate Eeyore, which I assume gave him one thing to be depressing about. (It’s an amusing thought however one which, like every thing else, dies within the cack-handed execution.) A while later, a younger lady referred to as Maria (Maria Taylor) who’s getting over a horrible incident with a stalker, rents a home within the wooden with half a dozen or so buddies for a restorative weekend, and encounters the murderous Pooh and Piglet.
The terrible fact is that it is a generic by-product horror script: Pooh and Piglet may simply as effectively be creepy guys sporting Pooh and Piglet masks menacing semi-clothed younger girls. There’s even a ramshackle petrol (or slightly “fuel”) station within the woods whose proprietor bafflingly speaks with a hillbilly American accent. And for the final word insult – these nervous about spoilers and sexist element had higher look away now – there’s not even a Remaining Woman comeuppance. Spoon some arsenic in that honey and begin consuming.
